Heed Battery Recalls: Apple Powerbook

By consumerist.comAugust 7, 2006

A nifty and easy consumer savvy tip for you: When they say they’re recalling your laptop’s batteries, you better check that list and send ’em back.

Just a warning to everyone: we woke up this morning at 6am because the apartment was filled with smoke and our laptop was on fire. It wasn’t plugged in, and it had been put to ‘sleep’ over night. It’s only a year old, so the lesson is: DON’T LEAVE YOUR LAPTOP ON UNATTENDED!

Another good idea is if companies could stop making products that EXPLODE IN THEIR USER’S FACES.

Please note that whether or not you leave your laptop on will not make a lick of difference if the battery decides to start a chemical fire.

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That WOULD be nice and all, but you got to remember batteries blow up all the time, the whole POINT of a battery is a chemical reaction, and as anyone who has taken 6th grade science knows, sometimes chemical reactions go to hell.

The difference between today and previous is
1) batteries are powering more energy intensive things thus requiring batteries that give off more power.

2) the internet makes a mountain out of a mole hill

only way your going to get these things to stop is if people would stop thinking they needed something 2000 times more powerful than the computer that was used on Apollo 11 to send dirty messages to other people.

Yes, and batteries will always fail. If you wanted a 100% safe battery, it would cost you a fortune and you wouldn’t want to pay for it anyway. 99.999% safe for a fraction of the cost is what the marketplace really wants.

…..Wow. I continue to be amazed by these meltdown batteries! You’d think that you’d get a bit more reliability from a battery pack that costs a hundred bucks or more. Or is the price just inflated because they know you have to have it? I suppose I should count my lucky stars that Acer batteries only just die after six months of use. And unlike some laptops, an Acer will run off AC with the battery pack out.

Sure, if you want to take a one in several hundred thousand occurance and turn it into “everyone is dying of laptop fires!” then consumers should definitely expect their laptops to explode. Or you could take the reasonable approach, realize that this is a rare occurance that happens to a handful of people, shrug, and hope that it doesn’t happen to you.

I’ll put this as simply as possible: If you think ANY technology that is designed to store latent engery is ever going to be 100% safe with ZERO catastrophic failures, you were not raised on the planet earth. Potential energy is always potentially dangerous.

What scares me is the fact that these batteries in Apple and Dells (I’m sure a ThinkPad explosion is due) are doing it regardless if they’re being charged or not. Unplugged and asleep makes for a “all bets are off” situation. I’d say remove the battery and put it in a fireproof box at home if it’s left unguarded – but here’s a fun scenario – now you can have your plane crash because of a laptop fire.

How many laptops fly on planes times how many are checked into the luggage hold – how many flights per day – ah we should have our first laptop-downed jet crashing into a housing development sometime – say – November right around the time the Thanksgiving commute starts I’d guess.

OR the NTSB will forbid laptops on planes and good luck with your remote work. Either way – this needs to be addressed pronto.